Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson, Karin B. Miller

2 reviews

bashsbooks's review

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informative lighthearted fast-paced

3.25

Laundry Love has a lot of good info on how to do your laundry more efficiently, which is exactly what I was looking for. I think the part about how to dry your clothes without using a dryer, how to wash your clothes less, and all the stain removal information were the most relevant to me. I do wish this covered more about how to handwash things - there is a brief section on it (and I am definitely going to try the salad spinner hack), but most of the book assumes you have access to a washer (either you have one in your building or you can go to a Laundromat). I do not, and I was hoping for more info on what to do in this sitch. But I think I can extrapolate a lot from the tips given. Recommended for upping your laundry game.
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strangeeigenfunction's review against another edition

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informative inspiring

3.5

I suspect there are some scientific inaccuracies here. 

  • The whole rationale for detergents that aren't just soap is that they work better in hard water while regular soap doesn't so much. This is not addressed at all.
  • I guess you can describe soap as making water wetter, but it's frequently explained as allowing otherwise non-miscible nonpolar substances to disperse in water, and I suspect leaving that out is an incomplete explanation.

  • Stop feeding chemical phobia: a simple substance like "olive oil" contains some amounts of scary sounding stuff like hydroxytyrosol. ooh scary—but it's just a random chemical made by the plant. you are made of chemicals, including some that would have very complicated names if named systemically 
  • I swear at one point he referred to salt or vinegar or alcohol as an enzyme.
  • Vodka is mostly ethanol, one of the VOCs he mentions. I'd have to check, but I'd expect his favorite isopropanol/running alcohol is on the VOC list as well—it's volatile and organic in the chemical sense.
  • I don't know in what world coffee is an inorganic stain, by either chemical or colloquial "living" criteria. I can only guess that either tannins(?) or maybe some weird pyrolyzed organic(chemically) compounds from the roasting process behave very differently than most plants? (but then mud is organic? idk)

(There's also a footnote about "brew on Tuesday" in the chore days rhyme, that he suggests is getting the weekend started early but historically probably refers to the age when beer (or hard cider), possibly watered down, was an everyday staple.)
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